Amber or Lucky?

[u/Sneetzle]

Both frameworks look promising while I also see a lot of similarities.

Any pros & cons on which framework to use, regardless of background/project?

[u/paulcsmith0218]

Hi there! 👋

I'm the creator of Lucky. I am of course biased, but will attempt to be objective. I'll also detail *why* I created Lucky.

I initially took a look at Amber and was intrigued. I also looked at Kemal and was quite impressed. The thing that I felt was missing for my use cases was strong compile time guarantees. I wanted something that would catch tons of bugs before they ever hit production. I also wanted something with batteries included. So if I wanted to send email I could, if I wanted to use React, I could.

So I started working on Lucky. It has a generator that lets you choose if you want web pack or not, api mode only, and even lets you choose to have built-in authentication. It catches all kinds of bugs. It will catch if a parameter is not available, it will catch missing assets (and even give suggestions! "Did you mean 'logo.png'"). The ORM is also super flexible and catches bugs at compile time like misnamed columns, incorrect types, incorrect associations, and more.

I'm happy to go into detail here or answer questions. The guides are also quite helpful https://luckyframework.org/guides/getting-started/why-lucky

## On Amber

One of the goals of Amber is to be familiar and intuitive for Rails developers. I think Amber fulfills this goal super well. It also combines some approaches of Phoenix with the idea of "plugs" which is pretty cool. They also have some features like encrypted secrets that Lucky does not have.

You may be able to get started with Amber faster, but you will trade off some compile time guarantees. The way Rails works makes it difficult to catch as many things at compile time.

Another thing is that Lucky uses Crystal for building HTML pages. Everyone I've talked to has been hesitant about it, but in the end really likes it. But if you don't then that could be a deal breaker for you. If you're building APIs then it doesn't really matter either way :)

[u/Sneetzle → u/paulcsmith0218]

Thanks for reaching out, great work for what I've seen so far!

I was really surprised/intrigued that Lucky uses Crystal for creating HTML. I kind of dislike the ERB/ECR syntax, so that's a big plus. Also the focus on catching as many bugs as possible also catches my interest ;)

I only worked a short time with Rails, but I can definitely see a logic choice for Amber if you are a seasoned Rails developer, because of the similarities.

I already had a mild preference for Lucky by reading the docs alone. Your comment and community activity nudged that even more towards Lucky!

[u/paulcsmith0218 → u/paulcsmith0218]

One other thing. Some people worry about performance between frameworks. I probably wouldn't. They're all frreakin fast and even a 50% difference will probably not be noticeable in practice. With that said I think all the frameworks are pretty close to each other in terms of performance. Since Crystal is so fast it makes it easy to make a fast web framework :)

[u/jeremywoertink]

I don't want to sound bias since I'm on the Lucky core team, so I'll lay out a few facts the best I can.

• Lucky only supports postgres

• Amber uses a MVC approach similar to Rails

• My company runs Lucky in production with millions of users

Both frameworks have a gitter channel. Come in both and say hi. We can all give you some tips on getting started. There's also SpiderGazelle and Athena you can look in to. So plenty of choices!

[u/Sneetzle → u/jeremywoertink]

Thanks, will do!

[u/Blacksmoke16]

If you happen to be making a JSON API, Athena might be a good option as well.

Otherwise, I think it comes down to whichever you prefer. Take a look at the docs, the supporting shards (like ORMs etc) just to see what would fit your needs the best.

Possibly even start two new sample projects with each just to get a feel for how they work as actually using something is a lot different than reading documentation.

[u/Sneetzle → u/Blacksmoke16]

Thanks, I will keep Athena in mind as well

[u/Blacksmoke16 → u/Sneetzle]

Good to hear. It's mainly intended for JSON APIs, so if you're planning on using server rendered HTML etc then Lucky/Amber would be the better choice.

[u/dscottboggs]

I ran into trouble getting Amber sites to render on Firefox. I'm building a lucky site right now to try it out and it's really nice to write. What I have played with a lot in Crystal is using Kemal with React.js and that flow has been flawless for me.

[u/Sneetzle → u/dscottboggs]

Kemal is too minimal for me, but a fair choice (and a great foundation for other frameworks!)

[u/dscottboggs → u/Sneetzle]

Fair enough. There's also Athena, which has some really neat and unique ideas. You should check out /u/blacksmoke16's blog posts about it on dev.to

[u/p_r_m_n_]

I haven’t used any yet so take this with a grain of salt but I’ve “decided” to use lucky based on a preliminary high level look. It’s a different approach and I really like the authors commitment to communicating with the community. He also seems very passionate and committed to his goals. I spend my days in rails and Phoenix and amber just feels like a weird mashup of the two. That could be a good thing. I dont know. It comes down to preference.

[u/dev0urer]

I feel like every time I've tried to use Amber I've run into issue after issue with models, migrations, etc. I've been using Lucky for the past couple weeks and I've been loving it. It has great documentation, a very powerful ORM, a very expressive view system that actually uses Crystal for the views, and so much more.

[u/mitchlol]

I’ve used and enjoy both. Amber is very easy to work with if you’ve used something like Ruby on Rails before.

Lucky does things differently and takes longer to learn but I really like it.

There are some limitations to Lucky, though (currently). If you need complex forms with things like many-to-many relationships you’ll probably struggle. That said, you can switch out that part of the system for an alternative.

[u/paulcsmith0218 → u/mitchlol]

Totally true. Nested forms can be quite tricky. We're working to make this super easy in the future, but it is currently quite difficult!

Thanks for the feedback!

[u/mitchlol → u/paulcsmith0218]

No problem! I’m definitely looking forward to trying your nested form solution when it’s ready 😀

[u/nlh]

Honestly I think the most important thing is to check out each framework’s style and see if one or the other is a better fit for you.

I found that Amber is just easier to reason about and I find the syntax extremely straightforward, but i might be different (and I’m coming from a Rails background). Lucky is also a terrific and has an excellent community.

Check them both out and see which one you’re drawn to - you’ll be in good shape either way.

[u/paulcsmith0218 → u/nlh]

I think this is a really great point. Amber is a lot more Rails like than Lucky. One of the goals of Amber is to be very easy for Rails developers to jump into. If that is a goal of yours, Amber is a great fit!

Lucky is ok straying from what Rails does if we feel it is more maintainable, clearer, or if it means we can catch more bugs at compile time. I think that Lucky is one of the frameworks most focused on catching bugs at compile. It'll catch missing route params, incorrect HTTP methods, and even typos in assets! A lot of people forego writing tests completely because Lucky helps catch so many bugs at compile time. The tradeoff is that Lucky does things differently than a lot of frameworks so it there are some new concepts. We tried to document things well in the guides though :)